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Tapjoy Taps EBay Alum As Chief Product Officer

Mobile advertising and publishing platform Tapjoy
has brought on Jeff Drobick to fill the newly created position of chief product officer. Most recently president and CEO of Slashdot publisher Geeknet Media,
Drobick spent twelve years at eBay, where he was the VP of information management and delivery, as well as product development.

“Jeff’s
background and experience at eBay is the perfect complement to our model,” Steve Wadsworth, president and CEO of Tapjoy, told MediaPost on Wednesday. At
eBay, Drobick’s team was responsible for the company's analytic infrastructure and ad technology. He also led the Customer Service Technology Solutions organization at the ecommerce
giant.

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Tapjoy is perhaps best known for its “Mobile Value Exchange” model, which rewards consumers with virtual
currency or premium in-app content in exchange for watching videos. Advertisers pay on a cost-per-completed-view basis, so they are given some assurance that
consumers view the entire video. Advertisers can also recommend secondary actions upon completion of the video, driving consumers to do things such as “Visit Us on Facebook,” and
“Join the Conversation on Twitter.”

Like many pivot-prone startups, however, Tapjoy has lived many lives. Founded in 2007 as a mobile app
developer, the company morphed into a mobile app monetization platform in 2009. A year later, social gaming monetization company Offerpal Media acquired Tapjoy, and shortly thereafter adopted
Tapjoy’s name as its own.

Along with Drobick, a number of recent senior hires suggest that Tapjoy has reached a new level of maturity. Most notably,
Wadsworth -- a former president of the Disney Interactive Media Group -- was tapped to lead the company late last year.

By all indications, Wadsworth took over a
company with a lot of potential. At the time of his appointment, Tapjoy said its network of developers boasted more than 100 million monthly active participants, and had already reached more than a
billion mobile devices.

What’s more, from 2010 to 2011, Tapjoy reportedly grew sales from $20 million to over $100 million -- and that was despite
app-gatekeeper Apple’s decision to ban incentivized downloads.